Australian B-Ball TV Advert Called Racist

*In Australia, a promotional TV spot has upset several African-American former stars of the (Australian) National Basketball League who said a scene featuring a black player hopping into bed with a white couple is insensitive and racist.

The promo shows a series of Australian basketball players throwing a ball around a suburban house. Near the end, Sydney Kings forward Taj McCullough, who is black, leaps onto a white couple’s bed and nuzzles up to the woman. McCullough is the only player of color featured in the commercial.

Former Melbourne Tigers player Darryl McDonald slammed the advertisement.

“It puts black Americans in a bad light,” McDonald, who is also African-American, told Sydney’s Daily Telegraph. “That commercial has nothing to do with basketball. Nobody else would present their sport this way.”

In a statement on Friday, the NBL defended the ad as “lighthearted and fun.”

Every scene in the commercial is about how the new season means basketball is invading everyone’s lives again. The ball players are crashing into homes in the living room, dining room, bedroom, etc.

It is cute and clever. Yes, they did have the black player showing interest in the woman, but honestly that unfortunately reflects reality. If the rest of commercial was not about players crashing family moments, then maybe I’d be more upset.

It can be viewed as racist when you take context into consideration. Black Australian basketball players see it as too close to the case of Bryant Matthews who was” jailed for rape when he was found in similar circumstances as an unwanted third person in bed with a couple in Sydney in 2006.”

Actually, it was more innocent than it sounded.
He and his boys were at a hotel where they met this ho. One of the guys took her to this place where he was banging her with the door open, so everybody could see what was going on. Now Mathews, who was under the influence of alcohol, thought she was cool with it, so he went in there and fingered her. Guess she wasn’t down with niggas, so she cried rape. And you know they was going to string his ass up down under.

Um I don’t see the racism here it’s a rowdy commercial, they are tearing the house up, sliding on kitchen tables, I mean it’s all chaos, it got me pumped up for b-ball, but if there is racism then this one slipped by my radar as I thought him jumping in the bed went well with the theme of the commercial.

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